23 key moments from Twitter history

By Brandon Griggs and Heather Kelly, CNN

Updated 12:48 PM ET, Mon September 16, 2013

Twitter's top moments14 photos

Key Twitter moments: The first tweet – In the early going, founders were using the vowel-free "Twttr" because they were focused on mobile and hoped to get the SMS shortcode 89887 (TWTTR). Unfortunately, according to co-founder Jack Dorsey, that was already owned by Teen People. This was his first tweet.

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Twitter's top moments14 photos

South by Southwest – Twitter was still a digital infant in March 2007, when the world's technorati descended on Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest Interactive festival. According to its founders, Twitter traffic more than tripled that week. All those influencers went home and shared the glories of a service even some tech-savvy folks didn't quite understand at the time.

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Twitter's top moments14 photos

'Arrested,' then freed – With one word, U.S. graduate student James Buck set in motion the process that would eventually get him freed from prison in Egypt. He was arrested April 10, 2008, while reporting on protests in the city of Mahalla. His one-word tweet spread quickly to friends and new supporters, who shined a spotlight on his situation.

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Twitter's top moments14 photos

Miracle on the Hudson – Dorsey calls January 15, 2009, the day Capt. Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger landed a failing U.S. Airways airliner on the Hudson River, a major turning point for Twitter. "It just changed everything," he said. "Suddenly the world turned its attention (to us), because we (Twitter users) were the source of news."

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Twitter's top moments14 photos

Sh*t My Dad Says – "Twitter celebrity" isn't exactly a career path most guidance counselors would suggest. But it happens. Justin Halpern created his "Sh*t My Dad Says" feed on August 3, 2009, to share quotes he'd collected for years. The account spawned a book deal and a TV show starring William Shatner.

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Twitter's top moments14 photos

The Arab Spring – The so-called "Arab Spring," which began in 2010, was fueled in part on social media like Twitter and Facebook. Young activists used the platforms to communicate among themselves and get their message out to others, even when governments sought to shut down Internet access.

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Twitter's top moments14 photos

The Weiner scandal – U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner made "my Twitter was hacked" the new "dog ate my homework" in June 2011, after his account was used to send salacious selfies to a woman who was not his wife. The unfolding scandal made him the first congressman to resign over a tweet.

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Twitter's top moments14 photos

Loss of a legend – Perhaps it's natural that Twitter, a place first adopted by techies, would be particularly affected by the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. On October 25, 2011, the day Jobs died, Twitter feeds filled with memorials, including the resurfacing of many of his quotes.

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Twitter's top moments14 photos

Four more years – This tweet by President Obama's account, shortly after his re-election on November 5, 2012, became the most retweeted post of all time until it was topped by Ellen DeGeneres's group selfie at the Oscars.

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Twitter's top moments14 photos

Vine debuts – Short messages were joined by short videos in January of this year when Twitter rolled out Vine, a mobile tool that lets users create and share looping, six-second videos. Five months later, Facebook-owned Instagram would add a similar video feature.

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Twitter's top moments14 photos

Lights out at the Super Bowl – Big events like awards shows and major sporting events are when Twitter is at its communal, snarky best. At its peak during the February 3 Super Bowl, thanks to a halftime performance by Beyonce and a power outage, there were 268,000 tweets being sent every minute.

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Twitter's top moments14 photos

Hacking Wall Street – On April 13, 2013, hackers from the Syrian Electronic Army briefly took over the Associated Press Twitter account and posted "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured." The Dow Jones plummeted briefly based on the fake "news."

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The Ellen Oscars selfie – This star-studded selfie, posted March 2 from the Oscars by host Ellen DeGeneres, collected 3.4 million retweets to become the most popular Twitter message ever.

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Story highlights

Twitter has filed to become a publicly traded company

The first tweet was sent in 2006; co-founder Jack Dorsey called it "Twttr"

A billion messages are sent on Twitter every 2½ days. That's three for every man, woman and child in the United States.

Sure, the vast majority of tweets haven't made history. But there have been no shortage of big moments for Twitter since its debut more than seven years ago. That's part of the reason Twitter has become a digital watercooler of sorts for global conversations around live TV events such as elections, the Oscars or the Super Bowl.

With news that Twitter has filed to become a publicly traded company, we took a look back at some of the key moments from its brief history. From celebrity-driven milestones to political downfalls to tweets from space, they've been as diverse as the more than 200 million people who now use the site.

May we present seven years of famous, and infamous, tweets and Twitterers:

March 2006 -- The first-ever tweet was posted by co-founder Jack Dorsey as part of an internal messaging system for Odeo, the podcasting company where Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams worked at the time. It said simply, "just setting up my twttr."

July 2006 -- The full version of Twitter was introduced publicly on July 15, although Twitter didn't spin off into its own company until the next year.

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Twitter on the campaign trail

March 2007 -- Although not yet mainstream, Twitter exploded in popularity among early adopters at the South By Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas. In a clever move, the company placed large screens in conference hallways that displayed live tweets about SXSW events. Buzz quickly grew, and by the end of the week, daily Twitter usage had tripled.

June 2009 -- After a disputed election in Iran, thousands of people took to the streets of Tehran in protest. The Iranian government cracked down on media reports about the protests, so demonstrators took to Twitter to get the word out, inspiring the phrase, "Twitter Revolution."

August 2009 -- Justin Halpern was amused by his father's blunt wisecracks so he created a Twitter account called "Sh*t My Dad Says." Within months he had millions of followers and a book deal, which led to a short-lived CBS sitcom, "$#*! My Dad Says," starring William Shatner.

January 2010 -- Astronaut Timothy Creamer sent the first live tweet from space under his account, Astro_TJ. It said: "Hello Twitterverse! We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station — the 1st live tweet from Space! :) More soon, send your ?s."

January 2011 -- Twitter and Facebook play a key role in "Arab Spring" uprisings as people in Tunisa, Egypt, Syria, Libya and other countries used the social networks to message each other and organize protests.

March 2011 -- Within minutes of news reports about an Egyptian cobra escaping from its enclosure at the Bronx Zoo, an anonymous jokester created a witty Twitter account that imagined the freed snake sightseeing its way around New York City. (Sample tweet: "Leaving Wall Street. These guys make my skin crawl.") The account quickly amassed more than 100,000 followers and heralded a new wave of parody Twitter feeds.

May 2011 -- Sohaib Athar, an IT consultant in Abbottabad, Pakistan, unwittingly live tweeted the U.S. Navy Seals' raid that killed Osama bin Laden after spotting helicopters hovering over his neighborhood. He later tweeted, "Uh oh, now I'm the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it."

June 2011 -- U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner resigned in disgrace after confessing to sending lewd photos of himself to women on Twitter. Weiner may never get the hang of this Twitter thing: His ill-fated New York mayoral bid was derailed this month by similar revelations.

November 2012 -- President Obama acknowledged his successful re-election with a tweeted image of him embracing his wife, Michelle, and the words "Four more years." With almost 800,000 retweets, it became the most-shared tweet ever.

January 2013 -- Twitter launched Vine, an app that lets users shoot and share 6-second looping videos. It has since acquired more than 13 million followers, who fill their followers' feeds with delightfully strange video creations.

February 2013 -- The Super Bowl was already one of Twitter's annual high points, when would-be wits unleashed some of their best 140-character one-liners. But this year, when a racy Beyonce halftime show was followed by a 35-minute power outage, things went into overdrive. At the peak, there were more than 268,000 tweets per minute -- and more than 24 million for the entire game.

April 2013 -- Hackers from the Syrian Electronic Army took over the Associated Press Twitter account and posted "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured." It was one of the most high-profile Twitter hacks to date and had far-reaching ramifications. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted dramatically before rebounding when the hoax was exposed.